Reddit will block Internet Archive access to its data — it was illegally collected by AI companies

Reddit announced restrictions on Internet Archive’s access to most of its content after discovering AI companies that were illegally collecting data from Wayback Machine, a page archiving service.

• From now on, Wayback Machine will not be able to index detailed pages with Reddit posts, comments, and user profiles, and will only have access to the Reddit.com homepage.

• This effectively limits archiving to only headlines and general information about popular posts.

• Reddit representative Tim Rathschmidt explained that these measures are aimed at protecting users and complying with platform policies, including privacy and content removal.

Reddit had previously restricted access to its data for artificial intelligence companies, offering official access for a fee. Last year, the platform entered into an agreement with Google and OpenAI regarding the use of data, but also filed a lawsuit against Anthropic for illegally collecting information.

The company also tightened its verification of users’ “humanity” after an experiment with artificial intelligence bots that pretended to be humans.

Read more: Microsoft is closing Lens. The popular document scanner is being sacrificed to artificial intelligence